Alexander Hamilton Papers

Appointment as Member of Committee of Correspondence, 11 February 1789

Appointment as Member of Committee of Correspondence

New York, February 11, 1789. On this date Hamilton and twelve others were appointed “a committee to correspond with the other counties on the subject” of the election of Robert Yates as governor and Pierre Van Cortlandt as lieutenant governor of New York State.1

New-York Packet, March 3, 1789.

1. The committee of correspondence was appointed “at a numerous and respectable meeting of citizens at Bardin’s Tavern, on Wednesday evening, the 11th inst.” At this meeting “it was unanimously agreed to support at the ensuing election, the Honorable Robert Yates, Esq. as Governor, and the Honorable Pierre Van Cortlandt, Esq. as Lieutenant-Governor” (The NewYork Packet, March 3, 1789). Yates, who had been H’s colleague at the Constitutional Convention, had left the Convention because he did not approve of the strong central government which the delegates proposed to establish. Throughout the campaign for ratification in New York he was a consistent Antifederalist. Van Cortlandt had served as lieutenant governor of New York since 1777.

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    Title
    Appointment as Member of Committee of Correspondence, 11 February 1789
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    11 February 1789

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    “Appointment as Member of Committee of Correspondence, 11 February 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-05-02-0082. [Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 5, June 1788 – November 1789, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 253–254.]